Valentine's Dance Read online

  They were definitely on the side of the bad guys.

  Ms. Hush was apparently giving everyone instructions, as the doctor, my so-called partner, and his brother were all lining up according to her directions. She handed each of them an object—Reo held a candle, Dr. Bernie held a bowl of water, and she even handed a short knife to Souji, who held it in his mouth. Apparently, whatever they were about to do to me, it was a big spell.

  My mouth was dry, my throat raw from all the screaming. But I was guessing they couldn’t hear me any more than I could hear them.

  For some reason, that terrified me more than anything else.

  The little voice in my head berated me for not getting away sooner, not fighting harder, not doing something to keep from coming to this spot.

  And then Ms. Hush began the spell.

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, I was still screaming, waves of pain wracking my body, sending arrows of agony racing from my head and down my spine. When the pain abated for just a few seconds, I leaned back against the invisible wall of my enclosure and slid down to sit with my knees drawn up against my chest, sobbing.

  “Is this absolutely necessary?” Reo asked, his voice concerned.

  “It really is,” Ms. Hush replied.

  I didn’t know when the dome had started letting me hear what they were saying again. But I realized in retrospect that I had been hearing Ms. Hush’s chanting for quite some time already. I simply hadn’t been able to process it over the misery of my own pain.

  Outside my enclosure, Souji whined.

  “If this doesn’t work soon,” Dr. Bernie said, “we are going to have to follow my suggestions and call in Ms. Gayle.”

  Ms. Hush nodded. “I agree. But not quite yet. I’m almost done with this preparation, and I think it will at least give us a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”

  “One more chance.” I could tell the doctor was trying to sound authoritative, but the thread of anxiety running through his words suggested that he wasn’t nearly as certain of himself as he liked to pretend.

  The chanting started up again, and I drew my knees in tight against my chest, wrapping my arms around them and putting my head down in an attempt to mitigate the misery I knew was coming.

  This time when it hit, it felt like a thousand bolts of lightning striking down on my head and back and shoulders.

  Crackling and popping white lights raced up and down the dome, as if chasing each other. But I barely noticed that—I was too busy trying to contain my screams as the white-hot lights raced across my skin, too.

  I was convinced I was beginning to smell myself cooking.

  Soon I couldn’t contain my screeching sobs. They crescendoed as Ms. Hush’s chants grew louder and louder, as if the spell was wrapping my pain up inside itself, the two of them spinning around each other, higher and higher and higher, electricity in the air spinning everything together until it exploded in a crash of embers, all the lightning bolts sliding up to the top of the dome and converging in a giant explosion. The entire magical structure buzzed and shuddered, carrying me with it so that I felt like one of those old cartoons where someone gets electrocuted and his entire skeleton shows.

  My analogy wasn’t all that far off the truth, either. When I glanced down at my skin, it was glowing white and almost translucent.

  “Oh, hell.” I had never heard Ms. Hush curse before.

  I whipped around to face her, planning to demand to know what she meant. But when I saw all three of the other people in the room staring at me in various degrees of shock, I instead started demanding, “What? What is it? Tell me.”

  Ms. Hush simply pointed at my midsection. I bent over to examine my stomach, catching a glimpse of what they were talking about. Then I craned my neck to look down my back as much as I could, too.

  Whatever it was, I saw it, too. Ms. Hush had made the magic work like an X-ray. I was lit from within. And what I saw inside me made my stomach heave.

  Its tentacles were woven throughout me, wrapped around my spine, resting across my heart, and continuing to grow, right before my very eyes.

  Seen this way, it was black and malignant, and it was taking me over.

  For just a heartbeat, I had a moment of absolute, perfect clarity. I turned around to face Ms. Hush, Dr. Bernie, Reo, and Souji. “Get this thing out of me. Please,” I begged.

  Chapter 6

  I wish I could say that during the excruciating hours that followed my moment of clarity, I was kinder to the people who were trying to help me.

  But the problem was that, despite how utterly hideous the creature inside me was, I wasn’t able to hold on to its memory for very long. Not consciously, anyway. The thought of it would slip into my mind now and again, like a nightmare I’d had once. But I couldn’t hold it.

  So instead, I fought them.

  The headmistress, Ms. Gayle, was indeed called in to consult, and she brought in both a witch doctor and another regular M.D.

  “Surgery is a bad idea,” the M.D. argued. “It’s in her spine. You would need a neurosurgeon. You will have to use magic for this.”

  “Magic can be unpredictable,” the witch doctor said. “If you want her spine preserved, a neurosurgeon might be your best bet.”

  I heard them, but I could barely understand what they were saying. I was far too busy alternating between screaming and sobbing. By the time they determined their plan, I had completely forgotten why we were all there.

  It was a mercy when Dr. Bernie gave me a shot of something that completely knocked me out.

  If I’d been aware enough to hope, I would’ve wished to stay completely out while they removed whatever it was coiling through my nervous system and beyond.

  But magical ailments don’t always respond well to medical answers—and whatever else this parasite I was carrying might be, it was definitely magic.

  That thought flashed across my mind just as I came to during the magical removal of the creature I carried. And for the first time in a week, I could remember everything that had brought me to this moment.

  “It was a wraith,” I gasped out as I opened my eyes, finally realizing that I was on my stomach on a table with my head face-down on a support, staring at the floor. I couldn’t move, but I was wide awake.

  “What?” Dr. Bernie’s voice floated down to me from above.

  Inside me, something writhed, sending waves of nausea roiling through my gut. I breathed through my mouth, hoping not to vomit, until the feeling passed.

  “It was a wraith. That’s what put this thing inside me. I remember now.”

  “We have the part that was embedded in your brain,” Ms. Gayle said. “That’s probably why you’re remembering this now.” I couldn’t quite figure out her tone. Usually, she sounded like she hated me. But now? She almost sounded...worried.

  Uh-oh. If Ms. Gayle was worried, then I should probably go ahead and ratchet up my own fear to eleven. Or more.

  “And when did it happen?” the headmistress continued.

  “Not long after Ms. Hush removed the other one—the spy-slug-thingy—from me.”

  Ms. Hush paused in her chanting. “Where were you when this other wraith attacked you?”

  “In my room. And then, as soon as it was over, I didn’t remember it happening. I thought you said in parabiology class that familiarity with one wraith made it easier to see and remember all wraiths.”

  “I said that sometimes happens.”

  “Hmph.” I went back to staring at the floor.

  “Kacie?” Ms. Hush said a few minutes later.

  “Yeah?”

  “This is probably going to hurt.”

  She wasn’t kidding, either. It hurt like hell. I wasn’t sure how, but she was drawing the parasite out of me an inch at a time, feeding it out of me as if she were dealing with a real-world, non-magical parasite that had to be coaxed out of the patient and wrapped around a stick.

  The image made me shudder, and that brought me back entirely to my present situation,
where apparently the parasite had begun to resist being removed.

  “Can’t you just kill it?” I asked, my words muffled by the way I clenched my teeth around them.

  “Not until we get it out of you,” Ms. Hush said.

  “Great.” I closed my eyes, prepared to deal with the pain.

  That’s what I thought, anyway.

  I was not prepared for the way the parasite began attaching itself to my insides.

  I thought I had been screaming bloody murder earlier, when they were trying to get a look at what the wraith had left inside me.

  But it was nothing compared to the sound I made when the thing decided it wanted to stay inside me. I felt it scrape along my spine, then curl around it and squeeze.

  We all heard the creaking of the bone as the parasite held on and tried to avoid moving. My scream subsided to a whimper as Ms. Hush quit pulling and the parasite quit holding on as tightly.

  I heard everyone breathing more heavily than usual and I imagined them leaning back to reconsider their plan.

  “Why me?” I asked. When no one answered for a second, I filled the silence. “I’m not whining about it. I’m really asking—what is it about me that makes the Lusus Naturae keep putting these things inside me?”

  “I’m not sure,” Ms. Gayle answered, sounding less like the prim headmistress and more like a real person for one of the few times since the first day I’d walked into her class. “None of us are. And we’ve been searching for answers to that question since long before you were here—since the moment we realized the Lusus Naturae had been hiding a hunter out among the general public.”

  “Am I the only one they did this to?” I asked.

  “As far as we know, yet.” She paused. “Hold on. We’re going to try again.”

  By the time I stopped screaming again, sweat dripped off my face, landing on the speckled white tile below me.

  “We got more of it that time,” Ms. Hush panted.

  “Can’t we just cut it in half and let the rest of it die inside me?” I begged.

  “No,” Dr. Bernie said, speaking for the first time. “I think we have to either get it all out or risk having it grow full-size again.”

  “As long as you’re awake, maybe you can tell us what you think the parasite was doing inside you. What effects did it have on you?” Ms. Gayle asked.

  “It made me paranoid as f—” Yet another scream interrupted my comment as Ms. Hush and Dr. Bernie moved together, pulling the parasite out by tiny increments. By the time they paused, we were all breathing heavily.

  “Almost finished,” Ms. Hush said. “Once or twice more and I think we’ll have it all.

  “Wait,” I said as they prepared to go again. “I just remembered something. I don’t know if it’s important or not, but it seemed oddly interested in the Valentine’s Day dance. I stopped and took a flyer off the wall and put it in my pocket, but I had no idea why I did it.”

  “An Academy dance?” I could almost hear Dr. Bernie’s frown. “Why on earth would it be interested in that?”

  I suddenly realized the answer, and Ms. Gayle and I spoke together. “The students.”

  “The Academy dances are very popular,” Ms. Gayle continued. “A great majority of our students will be there.”

  “When does it start?” I asked.

  “It’s been going for an hour already,” Ms. Hush said.

  “Then hurry and get this thing out of me. If something bad is happening, I want to help.” I clenched my teeth against the pain I knew was coming and steeled myself to endure it. If my friends were in trouble because the Lusus Naturae had slipped another bug into me, I wasn’t going to leave them alone.

  Chapter 7

  Ms. Gayle had rushed out ahead of us, leaving Dr. Bernie and Ms. Hush to finish removing the parasite from my system, but taking Reo and Souji with her from where they’d been waiting outside the operating room. They raced to the dance to make sure the Lusus Naturae weren’t planning to cause trouble.

  Cause trouble. That was such an odd way to put it, I thought as Dr. Bernie helped me sit up once they had finished removing the parasite. I stared at it sliding along the walls of the specimen jar Dr. Bernie had dropped it into.

  I’d been thinking of it like a snake or a worm, but it looked more like an octopus. A slimy, headless octopus.

  “What do you think it was doing inside me?” I asked Ms. Hush.

  She shrugged. “Soaking up any extra medication we gave you—that’s why you’re awake now. Definitely blocking your abilities and stopping you from telling anyone about it. Possibly using you as the Lusus Naturae’s unwitting eyes and ears in the Academy?”

  With a shudder, I turned away from it. “It might not have its own eyes,” I said, “but I’m sure it’s watching you. Be careful with it, okay? Don’t let it get to you.”

  “I promise,” Dr. Bernie said, giving the thing a hard look. “By the way,” he added, looking up at me, “this is definitely the thing that was giving you a smudgy aura. Yours is all clear now.”

  I don’t think I had genuinely smiled all week before that very moment. “Thank you, Dr. Bernie.”

  Stretching, I turned so I could see both of them. “Am I medically and magically okay to go now?”

  Dr. Bernie nodded. “There might be some lingering soreness, but there shouldn’t be any lasting repercussions. Not physically, anyway.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that last line, but I was willing to ignore it for now. If there were any non-physical repercussions, I would have to deal with them as they showed up.

  “Ms. Hush?” I asked, sliding down off the operating table and clutching the back of my hospital gown closed. I didn’t ask who had changed me into it. I was too embarrassed, and afraid I didn’t want to know, really.

  “Your clothes are in the first locker to the left out there,” she said, pointing out the door and down a hallway. “Next to the dressing rooms. You can change there. I’ll wait for you by the door.”

  “Thanks,” I said, walking with exaggerated care out the door to make sure I didn’t flash anyone. But as soon as I had my clothes in my hand, I got dressed faster than I’d really known was possible.

  When we stepped outside, I breathed in the crisp February air. It was darker than I’d expected—the octopus-bug extraction that taken much longer than I had realized.

  I wondered how long I’d been under before the meds wore off.

  And then Ms. Hush and I were also racing across campus, hoping that whatever the Lusus Naturae had planned, Ms. Gayle would be able to stop it in time.

  Because I was absolutely sure that they were planning to use the dance to do something awful.

  I just didn’t know what.

  Invade the campus?

  Take over?

  Implant one of those creepy octopus bugs inside every student?

  I knew that the instructors had been a little more vigilant than usual because of the signs that some Lusus Naturae might know where the Academy campus was located.

  But until they’d figured out that I was acting strange because of a Lusus Naturae parasite, no one had known for sure if the entire organization knew where we were, or if a couple of lone monsters had found us.

  Now we knew for sure—the Lusus Naturae had been watching the Hunters’ Academy.

  And I was certain, though I couldn’t have said why, that they had plans for all of us.

  What kind of magical terror can they inflict on us?

  As it turned out, it wasn’t magical terror at all.

  It was simply terror.

  Ms. Hush and I ran as fast as we could toward the building that held the Commons room, now decked out in pink and red hearts—I’d seen them at dinner the day before—and empty of tables and chairs. It was ideal for dancing.

  My boots crunched in the snow in a steady, thudding rhythm that matched the thumping of my heart. The closer we got, the more terrified I grew. I could almost hear something screaming inside my head, “Stop! Stop sto
p stop...”

  And worst of all, I didn’t know if it was a legitimate warning or a residual command left over from having the Lusus Naturae bug in my head.

  Finally, though, it grew too loud, too insistent, not to listen to it.

  “Wait.” I reached out to snag Ms. Hush’s sleeve. “I think it’s bad,” I wheezed.

  Ms. hush turned around and frowned at me, more confused than angry. “All the more reason to get inside and start helping,” she said.

  I didn’t have any argument against that, so I simply nodded, and we turned back toward the building. If we ran hard, we weren’t more than a minute or two away.

  And that’s when the bomb went off.

  Chapter 8

  Even as far away as we were, we were blown back by the blast. It rolled out of the building in a burst of blue-white flame with a heavy roll of smoke and debris immediately following it.

  Parts of the building were burning, the flames lighting up the night.

  The heated air pushed over us, rocking us back on our feet. But we were back up and running in seconds. As we got closer, I was glad to realize that there were other instructors and students running toward the fire.

  Not there. Your work is not to put out the fire.

  It was a little like the voice I’d carried inside while the octopus-bug had me, but different in that it seemed like it actually belonged to me.

  Other students were wandering around, searching for people. I joined them.

  Still, my heart pounded out only one name as I searched.

  Souji.

  Where was my partner? He had gone with his brother and Ms. Gayle to stop this from happening. My stomach tightened at the thought of what might have happened to them.

  No, Kacie DeLuca, you do not have time to worry about Souji. He can take care of himself.

  That’s what I kept trying to tell myself—but I didn’t fully believe it. Not really.